Applicants' prior U. S. patents and patent applications described problems associated with pest insects and other airborne biota and described apparatus and methods for protecting crops and other assets from insects and other airborne biota. The instant application describes additional embodiments and methods of use for some of the component elements and inventions described in Applicants' prior U. S. patents and patent applications, some of which may now become preferred embodiments, and expands upon methods, apparatus, configuration, and technologies that may be used with benefit in some embodiments, including embodiments of the instant invention wherein some functions of some elements may be controlled by human operators who may be located adjacent to or remotely from a location of sensors, processors, and weapons. In some embodiments, human operators located remotely or in a vicinity of a protected area or pest insects, or other area where sensors and weapons are deployed, may be presented with displays based upon sensor observations and may operate controls so as to cause weapons to engage targets deemed to be harmful or potentially harmful to protected assets.
For some applications where regions that may be used as boundary zones may be limited in width or in another dimension through which insects may fly in entering (or in some cases, in exiting) a protected area or volume or in simply flying from one location to another, it may be desirable to have available additional measurement capabilities to support more rapid detection, tracking, and/or discrimination techniques so that pest insects and other pests may be more rapidly identified within a shorter time and/or shorter distance of flight. For example, discrimination techniques that rely primarily on characteristics associated with wing beat frequencies may require observation of a flying insect during several wing beat cycles to obtain adequate confidence in identification. Additionally, some insects, particularly butterflies, may coast for extended periods without flapping their wings. Consequently, additional measurements including reflected spectral characteristics and other characteristics such as polarization scattering matrices (which may provide information, for example, on target length to width ratios, or body orientation in flight) may be desirable to support more rapid identification of pest insects with a level of confidence adequate to support a decision to engage targets identified as pest insects, or targets requiring control for other reasons. The potential use of measurements of spectral characteristics to support target identification, or discrimination of pest insects from beneficial or neutral insects, was disclosed in Applicants' earlier patents and patent applications. Additional information to support discrimination may include season and time of day, as disclosed in Applicant's incorporated U.S. Pat. No. 6,853,328 at the paragraph bridging cols. 20, 21, and FIG. 12. This application expands upon related but unobvious techniques that may also be applied to exploit dynamic characteristics of spectral information and other signatures that may be observed and/or measured.
The instant application also describes additional embodiments and/or features or technologies that may be incorporated with benefit in selected embodiments disclosed in Applicants' previous patents and patent applications, or in other embodiments that comprise obvious extensions of Applicants' instant and previous disclosures.